


who has waited long for you to speak

by coloredink



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Young Sherlock, shutting yourself in a wardrobe is a foolish thing to do, sort of a Narnia crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-02
Updated: 2011-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:30:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coloredink/pseuds/coloredink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If he had his phone, he could narrow down John H. Watson's location in an instant.  But it's 1989, and there's no Facebook, no Google, and the only telephones are attached to the wall with primitive cords.</p>
            </blockquote>





	who has waited long for you to speak

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Polski available: [Ten, kto długo czekał, żebyś przemówił- TŁUMACZENIE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4467731) by [Toootie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toootie/pseuds/Toootie)



> Written for [this kinkmeme prompt](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/8651.html?thread=38453195#t38453195) requesting a Sherlock/Narnia crossover of sorts. Thanks to #bakerstreet and Veda for their invaluable assistance.

Sherlock Holmes feels hardwood against his face and opens his eyes.

He's in the attic. Everything is neatly stacked and ordered, but covered in dust; bits of it cling to his clothes, and there's a clear, polished swathe on the floor from when he fell on the wardrobe. He gets up and thrusts himself back into the wardrobe, pushing aside the furs and jackets, and raps his knuckles furiously against the back until they're swollen and tender. He presses every inch with his fingertips, looking for some give, some falseness, but there's nothing. It's just a wardrobe.

No. This. This doesn't make sense. It was real. He knows it was real because he remembers everything.

\-----

"--and I went for a walk on the moor, looking for footprints, and I must have tripped or fallen on something, and then I woke up back here."

Mycroft looks at Sherlock and says, "Or you merely fell asleep in the wardrobe. Honestly, Sherlock, you're not a child any longer, there's no need to hide in cupboards."

Sherlock makes a frustrated noise; he wasn't _hiding_ , he was simply trying to find a quiet place to think. A concentrated atmosphere helped a concentration of thought, so of course he closed the door, although not all the way. He isn't an _idiot_. But, well. Lock yourself in the pantry once when you were _six years old_ and no one ever lets you live it down.

"I didn't dream it," he says, loudly. "It happened."

Mycroft swirls his spoon through the custard swimming at the bottom of the dish, pushing around the crumbs that remain of his pudding. He's twenty years old and home for the summer holidays, and he's put on over half a stone since they last saw him. He's feeling the pressure of his future, and it's manifesting in late-night snacks of leftover pudding. "Let's say this is true. That it happened. What do you expect me to do about it?" He raises an eyebrow at Sherlock.

It takes a while, but Sherlock finally admits, "I don't know. Just believe me."

Mycroft sets his spoon down. "Well, I don't. Nobody would. You wouldn't, either."

"I know," Sherlock says. "It's like some sort of children's tale. But that's precisely why." He leans forward with his hands on the table, looking straight into Mycroft's eyes, and he remembers being taller, deeper-voiced, a more intimidating presence, and it fills him to the bones with heavy frustration. "You know me, Mycroft. Would I make up such a stupid, ridiculous, _fanciful_ tale?"

Mycroft blinks twice, then drops his gaze at last. A smile curves the corners of his lips. "No."

\-----

God, how he longs for the Internet. If he had his phone, he could narrow down John H. Watson's location in an instant. But it's 1989, and there's no Facebook, no Google, and the only telephones are attached to the wall with primitive cords. It takes Sherlock far too long to remember such archaic institutions as _the public library_ , and then he hounds Mycroft until he agrees to drive him to the train station and give him money for a ticket to Hersham.

"Mummy will throw a fit," he remarks, conversationally.

"Let her," Sherlock snaps, because this is _important_.

There are thirty-four Watsons in the phone book. He eliminates the ones without a Hersham dialling code, leaving nineteen, and copies the rest carefully onto a scrap of paper. He takes them to a nearby pay phone and proceeds to ring them one after another, asking for John. He makes a note next to the ones that are a wrong number and the ones where no one picks up. Twice, he _does_ reach a John Watson, but one is the woman's husband and another is what sounds like a 7-year-old boy. It's warm and stuffy in the phonebox, and his hair is plastered to his forehead. After call number eleven (the 7-year-old boy), he goes into a nearby service station to ask for a cup of water and downs it in three swallows, under the curious and watchful eye of the attendant.

A teenager answers call number fifteen. "Hello?"

Sherlock swallows. "Can I speak to John?"

"That's me," says the boy. "Who's this?"

It's _him_. Sherlock somehow knows this to be true, even though his voice hasn't fully completed its downward trajectory. Something about the inflection, the tone. Sherlock grips the receiver so hard the plastic cracks.

"Hello?" says the boy again, sounding irritated or unnerved now. Sherlock can almost see his face, the way his eyebrows draw low on his forehead.

He hangs up.

\-----

Watson, T., father of one John H. Watson, lives on Thrupps Avenue, thankfully not too far from the library where Sherlock has been doing his detective work. Sherlock makes his way there, but pauses at the entrance to the street, wondering what he plans on doing when he gets there. Knock on their door, ask for John, and then explain that he's from John Watson's future? And then what? Does he expect John to believe him? And become his _friend_? Perhaps he should think this through.

He's saved, for the moment anyhow, by John Watson coming down the street towards him.

Sherlock conceals himself very badly behind a tree, but John doesn't take any notice. He's walking with the free and easy stride of a teenage boy, a football tucked under one arm, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts. Sherlock follows him a careful distance behind, aware that it's useless; this isn't London, where he can duck into a nearby alley or pretend to be looking in a shop window. The street is nearly deserted: they pass by a woman working in her front garden, face shielded by a hat, and a couple of younger children playing in their yard, and that's all. John doesn't pay them any attention, and he doesn't glance behind him.

A few minutes later, after a few turns, Sherlock sees the green space looming up ahead and realises that John is going to the park. The vision rises before him: John Watson is going to kick around a football with a few of his equally plebeian friends, take advantage of the late summer days, and then go home for supper with his family. Possibly he and Harry will bicker at the dinner table, although he can't recall where Harry is at this point in John's life. It's the picture of a disgustingly normal life in a disgustingly banal little town.

Sherlock dashes up behind John and gives him a good, hard, shove. It's enough to send him reeling forwards a few steps, but not enough to knock him over. He spins around to face Sherlock, fist clenched, but stops when he gets a good look at his assailant. Sherlock glares up at him defiantly, chagrined to realise that John is actually _taller_ than him.

"What the hell?" says John, and for a moment Sherlock is mesmerised by his hair--much longer now than it will be when they meet in 2010--and his eyes and his unlined face, the width of his shoulders and the muscles of his arms, how _different_ he is, how unformed, the man that will grow around him.

"My name is Sherlock Holmes," says Sherlock, "and someday I'm going to be brilliant, and you're going to come with me. So wait for that, and don't get yourself killed in Afghanistan."

Then he runs away. John doesn't follow him. Not yet. Not now.

\-----

Mycroft picks him up from the train station. Sherlock is sweaty and exhausted and quiet.

"Mummy's been beside herself," Mycroft says, at last.

"She's always beside herself," Sherlock mutters.

They lapse back into a prickly silence.

"Well," says Mycroft, "did you find what you were looking for?"

Sherlock stares out the window, at the dark countryside rolling by. God, it will be _years_. Years and years and years of school, and more school, and living in dodgy flats in London, before he sees John Watson again, before he'll be _happy_. No wonder he's going to do so many drugs. "No," he says. "But I will."


End file.
